This devotional continues on the subject of the Person of God, specifically the Trinity. God has revealed Himself in the Persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit- one in essence, but three in equal Persons. In the August devotional, we saw that 1 John 4:7-8 says that God is love. He could not be love without there being someone to love. In John 17:24, Jesus said that the Father loved Him before the foundation of the world. Romans 5:5 says that the Holy Spirit stirs up love for God in the heart. From eternity past, the Holy Spirit has stirred delight for the Father and the Son. God could not eternally be love if He was alone. The Trinity demonstrates perfect love. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct, yet inseparable.
This eternal, blessed Trinity created a perfect creation. It mirrored His character as a place of perfect beauty and love and harmony. But that perfection was upended and replaced with pain and turmoil when Adam sinned. God is love, and He created us to thrive in the atmosphere of love. Sin twisted us and perverted our love so that our attention turned inward. 2 Timothy 3:2-4 describes the downward spiral of sin’s perversion of love. It says that we turn to being “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” In this fallen world, the only way to know true love is to know the demonstration of love of God for us in Jesus Christ coming to die for us (1 John 3:16).
In John 17:25-26, Jesus said that in His coming, He made the character of God known. He lived and died so that we might enter into the enjoyment of the love of God that has eternally existed between Father, Son and Holy Spirit (John 17:21-23). This required His sacrificial death on the cross for our sins. This means that salvation is bigger than mere forgiveness. It is closeness with God. That is why Jesus came as Immanuel, God with us (Matthew 1:23). The power behind all of the work of Jesus was and continues to be the work of the Holy Spirit.
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